But the actual situation of power generation in South Asia is completely different. "Today, more than one-third of the world population without electricity lives in South Asia," said Diep Nguyen-Van Houttee, senior operations officer at the World Bank.[break]
Bangladesh might have done best on the front of millennium development goals among all South Asian countries. Had it not faced power shortage, its economy would have grown by additional 2 percentage points over an average of some 6 percent recorded for the past half decade.
Industrial power cuts have been slashing 400,000 jobs in Pakistan every year, and the impact of some 16 hours of load shedding on lives of people and national output need no explanations.
Individual countries of South Asia may boast of a huge hydropower and natural gas resources, but reality is South Asia remains one of the worst parts of the world in terms of access to and reliable supply of electricity.
"And that is despite the fact that Nepal and Afghanistan combined can produce 100,000 MW of hydropower, alleviating the crippling energy shortages which have resulted in job losses and reducing growing dependence on fossil fuel," said Tahseen Sayed, World Bank country manager for Nepal.
While South Asian leaders have seriously lagged behind in delivering benefits to people by making almost six-year old free trade area agreement work, their apathy to harness the region´s energy potential and trade on it have only exacerbated problems, making locally produced goods more expensive and causing the industries to lose competitiveness in the international market.
Experts at a journalism workshop on regional cooperation in South Asia, which kicked off in Kathmandu on Tuesday, raised concerns over such constraints facing South Asia, and urged the regional leaders to put in place energy trading scheme in the region so that countries could address their power woes collectively.
"South Asia should implement regional power trading agreement if countries in the region are to tap opportunities abound," said Houttee, who works in the World Bank´s newly created department -- South Asian Regional Integration.
Referring to the recent developments, she, however, lauded latest recognition of some of the countries in the region over losses emanating from the severe power crisis and their openness to trade on power.
"It is good development that Bangladesh and Pakistan have agreed to buy 500 MW of electricity each from India. And Nepal too is working on the project that will bolster its capacity on cross-border power trade," she noted.
But experts said such segregated efforts will not yield strong result.
They asked South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation to strongly pick up the issue of cooperation on power development and trading. For this, they suggested the regional leaders to develop a power development fund, lay down cross-border transmission line and work out agreements that will pave the way for unhindered and reliable energy trading across the region.
This is pretty crucial, particularly as the countries in the region will soon have *1 million people searching for new jobs every month, and unless they have energy to support industrial growth, they will face troubles in satisfying the people´s aspiration, said Sayed.
*Corrected
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